I've now played the whole 10 hours of the game. I didn't touch the Multiplayer as I don't play multiplayer. So these are my thoughts on the single player portion of the game as I was able to play in 10 hours.

Firstly lets get the 800 pound gorilla out of the room. The facial animations in the game aren't the greatest. As well as a few other issues, guns being backwards in npc's hands in cinematics. But these things didn't really pull me out of the game. And only were jarring when I started actually looking for them and noticing them, otherwise they were able to be ignored.

Bioware hasn't ever been top notch on facial animations in the Mass Effect series so far to date. So it's not a super surprise.

As far as the game play. The combat is the best the series has ever had. It's fast, brutal and very fun. The addition of the Jump Jet makes for some interesting options.

The story was very intriguing. The mystery of Ryder's father, the S.A.M. A.I., and the Scourge are engaging and more than enough for the game start.

Graphically it's beautiful. I've not seen many games that can pull off environments as detailed and beautiful as this game has.

The Day One Patch is already live in the trial version. So any bugs the game may have had I never saw. It ran great and I tried it on 3 machines.

My main rig and my wife's computer ran the game on ultra settings with no frame rate issues, no buffering, and low loading times.

The Laptop ran the game on low settings with no graphical issues, little lag and medium loading times. The different visuals in the settings don't really look much different overall. While I'm sure there is some down scaling and pixelating but I never noticed it on the laptops 1080 16x9 screen.

If you run the game on a SSD the loading times are much reduced. My laptop has a HHD, the other two machines have SSD and I did notice the loading times on the HHD were maybe 40 seconds to a minutes long on the SSD 30 seconds tops.

The voice acting leaves something to be desired as does the writing. But over all I enjoyed the game, enough to buy it twice, once for me, once for my wife.

I recommend this game. If your a fan of Mass Effect or sci-fi games in general I don't think you will be disappointed.

The Motherboard is military surplus with 4 sockets on it. Everything else is off the shelf. Total the build cost me with monitor (60inch 1080p tv), custom case, and liquid cooling, around $4,000 to build.

"Update" I have now finished a full 100% run of the game. Time for my postmortem.

Mechanics - The UI needs serious work, case in point the map. In all previous Mass Effect games, and in most other games, opening and exiting the map was a single button. In this game (PC) you press M to open the map, then need to hit ESC 3 times in order to get back to game play. Pressing M again while in the map does nothing.

The "Journal" which tracks your missions seems to be buggy. As are a few actual Missions. Often it is impossible to find the one new item it's indicating and a bugged mission will leave a "New Item" marker in the journal tab that will not go away. While most "Menu" items, Map, Journal, Inventory, and the like have single button access the above ESC presses are required to get back to game play.

Combat - About the most fun I've had in any 3rd person shooter I've ever played. It's fast paced, the enemy AI is actually intelligent for the most part. Which requires a lot of on the fly planning, cover awareness and situational awareness of where all the enemies are and if their trying to flank you. The Jump Jets add a very cool aspect to the combat as you can do Hover attacks both with weapons and powers.

Crafting - The crafting system in the game didn't seem that important at first, until I really got into it. Realizing I can make weapons with more mod slots, Armor with Stats you would never find in a kill drop, and Kinds of armor and weapons that 100% never drop became a serious obsession with me. I had fun doing the crafting and trying different variations on the same type or class of weapon to see how Uber I could make them.

Case In point, the Remnant "Sweeper" Assault Rifle, it's a energy weapon that Recharges after so much use instead of needing Ammo, but while crafting this weapon you can give it up to 4 mod slots, as well as change it's fire effects. It shoots 3 shots per trigger pull, and in my case I gave it some damage boosts for both Tech and Biotic, and Combo attacks, as well as changing it's fire type from just plasma bolts to Scorpion like Sticky Grenades. Given it's fast fire rate and the accuracy with a Scope attached it became my favorite weapon to use.

Over all the crafting in the game became so interesting to go into I would revisit planets just to look for materials and item drops from respawning enemies just to deconstruct for resources to make bigger and better gear.

Story - The Story of this game is massive and sweeping. The journey for the main character is emotional and stirring. Much like the Journey for Commander Shepard. The Choices that effect later games are more than obvious at times. But even with that the over all effect is satisfying.

Unlike most games or even previous Mass Effect games. Every mission even the side missions tie into the over arching plot of the game, so even when doing some go clear X area of X enemies you realize it's actually helping your over all goal for that world and feels less like a side mission than main quest.

Also in many games the question comes up "Why can't you people do this yourselves." At least for the player. This game gives that question an answer. As "Pathfinder" It's your job to make these various worlds ready and safe for outposts to be setup. And previous attempts made prior to your arrival failed miserably. So it's obvious from the start your character really is this group's last hope and you have to pull through somehow.

There is nothing in the game that says which ending from the previous trilogy is being considered "Cannon" to the series. However, information about the "Reaper" invasion starting does eventually become known to the main character. However the way it's presented it's unknown to the character if the invasion was won or lost by the "Reapers". Which is the only Spoiler I'll give.

Final Thoughts - Over all the game given all it's faults, frustrations and animation issues, was fun and exciting with a emotional story that was well worth the time taken to have every conversation with every character. I was satisfied and happy with my purchase and excited for what's next in this new trilogy.

Final Score 8/10 the Animation issue I spoke of in my first post and the UI issues reduced my score sadly.

The APEX multiplayer effects a single side mission journal entry designed to get you to play multiplayer, ignoring it has 0 effect on the story or % complete.

As far as the Nomad, when you first get it, it's kinda cool, and can do some cool things. It doesn't have a gun on it like the Mako had. But the upgrades you can make for it do improve it a great deal.

as an aside, has any1 here read Mass Effect - Andromeda: Nexus Uprising yet? I got an audio copy, but Im kinda worried I'll be spoiling story element for myself indulging in it b4 I touch the game proper......

Tazer

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Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

Geoff Johns should have a 10 mile restraining order from comic books, let alone films.